//Vampire Ren info below the cut~
This is mostly just a repository for fun facts about the dude and my headcanons for vampires in general.
I tend to write vampirism in a semi-realistic/semi-scientific light (blame the fact that I grew up with that vampire book that compares vampirism to a type of parasite... I forget what it was called but I was really inspired by that book. By the same guy who made the Uglies, Pretties, and Specials books?) So... yeah.
Here’s how they work, in my setting:
-Vampires are “undead” in the sense that people go through a period of being medically dead while transforming. They still have a beating heart, a warm body, etc. You wouldn’t think they had been dead, other than them being extremely pale.
-Vampires by nature have photophobia/an allergy to sunlight. It probably won’t burn them alive, (probably) but they can very easily die of anaphylaxis if they’re out in direct sun for too long, and burn very quickly. Nobody knows why exactly this happens. They also have a very heightened sense of smell, so a lot of them don’t like very strong aromatics like garlic. Although, they can’t eat regardless.
-Vampires don’t have a normal digestive system and while they can handle things that are liquid reasonably well, anything solid makes them sick. They also can’t filter alcohol as well as a human, and get drunk very easily. If they drink blood from someone who’s drunk, they can even get tipsy! :O
-Vampire fangs are retractable. They have a muscle in their jaw that allows them to pop their fangs out. At full size, they look similar to snake fangs. They also have “venom”. This “venom” isn’t actually a poison, but it is a powerful anti-coagulant that increases blood flow. It’s considered likely that this “venom” also has a powerful hypnotic/euphoric property, similar to an extremely potent antipsychotic. (It doesn’t have very strong an effect on vampires, however). They also have another “venom” that is a strong clotting agent. All of this to make sure they can easily feed without necessarily killing a host, or making them hostile or violent. Vampires can retract their fangs at will with practice, but it’s also an automatic response to hunger/sexual desire.
-Hunger and sexual desire are kind of linked in vampires. Considering they’re treated as agents of lust and desire in writing, this isn’t entirely surprising. Sometimes it's hard for a vampire to tell apart whether they wanna bang or have a nice meal (or both). This reaches a fever pitch when a vampire finds an ideal mate. The reason for this linking is... unclear, however, vampires do bite each other to mark their mates (causing some sort of strange mark that may or may not be a form of hyperpigmentation) and to make things... well, more fun.
-A vampire only turns someone when they bite their neck. Why exactly? Who knows. Whatever turns a person into a vampire must not last long in the human body.
Currently, vampire Ren works as a nurse in a psych ward. He uses his abilities to calm down unstable patients and takes blood that is too old for transfusion use as his meals. (It’s stale, sure, but he doesn’t feel bad taking it.) He doesn’t like to bite someone he loves after how he brainwashed his parents in his youth, for fear that the people close to him won’t genuinely love him, and are instead just addicted to the high he can provide.
His hobbies are reading, noh and kabuki, Iaido, and martial arts. His interests are generally very old-fashioned because they’re just what he grew up with. He’s a bit slow to pick up technology, and barely knows how to use his smartphone beyond calling people and using it as an address book.
I’ll upload a pic of his appearance later~.
